New York Times: El Paso’s Message for Trump Before Rally: Don’t Speak for Us

11Feb

Ahead of President Trump’s
scheduled rally in this West Texas city aimed at building support for his
proposed wall on the border with Mexico, people from across the ideological
spectrum in El Paso had a message for him on Sunday: Don’t speak for us.

“The president is just
wrong about the wall and wrong about El Paso,” said Jon Barela, a lifelong
Republican and chief executive of the Borderplex Alliance, an organization
promoting economic development in a cross-border industrial hub with a combined
population of more than 2.7 million, taking in the cities of El Paso, Ciudad
Juárez and Las Cruces.

Mr. Barela disputed Mr.
Trump’s widely discredited assertion that border
fencing had cut violent crime in El Paso, pointing to F.B.I. data showing that
the city has ranked for decades among the safest urban areas its size in the
United States — long before American authorities started building some fencing
along the border about a decade ago.

“As a fiscally
conservative Republican, I just don’t understand how spending $25 billion on a
wall with limited effectiveness is a good idea,” Mr. Barela said in an
interview. “Mexico is an economic and strategic ally of the United States, and
an antiquated effort to place a barrier between us just won’t work.”

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